


Lost and Found

by historymiss



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, genfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 11:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5496137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some vignettes exploring the main casts' childhoods</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

Poe Dameron has space in his blood. He’s born on Yavin 4, after all: one of the kids brought into the galaxy as their parents take to the stars to fight a war. He’s born into a world that smells of engine oil, of the ozone and burnt-air stink from X-wing engines, of warm, dusty stone under an endless sky. He re-enacts dogfights with the other base kids, slipping around orange-suited legs, arms outstretched, to take down Ben with imaginary lasers (only to be shot down in turn). When Poe looks up at the stars, he knows that one day, he’ll be out there among them, another light among thousands.

Stories begin with orphans: there was a boy, and he was stolen. It wasn’t told to him that way, but the truth remains: he was taken from his mother, his father, his grandparents, and given a number before he could ever have a name. He grows up with a thousand brothers and sisters, but no face. It isn’t so bad, he tells himself. At least he has a place. He still sneaks looks at the stars, now and then. It doesn’t make him feel small, like he’s heard some of the other troopers talk about. FN-2187 looks up at the stars and wonders if, perhaps, there’s another place he fits a little better.

Once a family lost a girl. They didn’t mean to. But it happened anyway. Rey’s earliest memories are of waiting. It doesn’t take long at all for her to forget almost everything about her parents except that she’s waiting for them. She remembers fragments. An orange jumpsuit. The smell of engine oil and ozone. Rey counts the days dutifully, keeps herself in good order (she doesn’t want her family to arrive and find her sick, or in trouble), keeps her belongings packed and ready to go. She grows into the habit of hope, and tells herself a story to pass the time.

_Once upon a time, there was a boy in a desert._

_(Kylo Ren is made of stories. He knows this, trades on it, builds it as much as he can. The story of the returning Sith. Ren the Jedi-killer, the Resistance’s cautionary tale. The story nobody really remembers, though, is this. Once upon a time a little boy had the best dad in the galaxy until one day, the universe spoke to him and he spoke to it in turn. And, well, that was that. There’s a story for that, too. Kids with gifts don’t get to run around with smugglers, they don’t get to play x-wing and, worst of all, they can tell when their parents are afraid of them. That was the worst of it, in the end. Nobody _ **told** _ Ben he was scary. He grew into it. Same as everything else.)_


End file.
